


Hard-boiled eggs

by SpaceValkyrie



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 05:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9705317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceValkyrie/pseuds/SpaceValkyrie
Summary: Quinn and Nick bond after scavenging through ruins. Slowly, but surely, she's building a life out here.





	

"Let me know if you need help with that thing, boss."

I felt the corner of my cheek pinch into a smirk. I didn't give him the satisfaction of any response. Besides. I was too busy dealing with the damned terminal. After three failed attempts, I tried a completely different tactic. My callused fingers typed out the word, "FENCES," - and the sweet, satisfactory blip of a successful entry hit my ears. 

"Nice. Like a conductor at the orchestra," Valentine commented. He was busy plucking through some file cabinets.

"You're pretty damn poetic....for a robot." I knew that irked him. My grin widened from ear to ear. I flashed teeth at him this time. He paused where he stood, his metal fingers lingering over a folder. I loved watching his brow furrow over his glowing, yellow eyes. Eyes I at first had found so eerie. So foreign. Now they were the only eyes that felt human when they looked at me. This was his world, and he was comfortable in it. He was human in it. Everyone else played the part of a raider. A soldier. He was just a good-hearted guy, trying to get by. Trying to piece together the wires of memory, floating around in his torn-apart head. 

I could've sworn his eyes glimmered with amusement as he looked at me, then. He certainly was grinning - that much was obvious. "And I didn't realize humans could be such sarcastic ass hats."

"C'mon, Nicky." I shuffled past him, opening the door that now clicked open with ease. "Let's see what these guys have got."

Our task for the day was simple enough. Pluck off a few raiders and loot the building they had taken up in for resources for Sanctuary. We'd made a living there. A community. I could finally come back to my old town and see people - maybe not with smiling faces and day jobs, little kids tucked in carts and yapping little dogs everywhere - functioning. Attempting to function, anyway. The occasional bout with raiders would happen; but people were beginning to feel safe. 

At first, after I awoke and was dealt the blow at the Vault, I gave less than two shits about everyone else. I charmed the pants off anyone I felt could give me a few caps and plugged bullets where I found the holes - even if that meant in some loud-mouth's brain who wasn't giving me information about Shaun. I ran around with a Super Mutant that would be my heavy and muscle when someone wasn't giving me what I needed. He could crush my brain with his pinky finger if he wanted - but Strong respected me. I'd hardened. Hell. I'd fucking solidified.

I used to be a lawyer. Top of my class in college. We were moderately wealthy, Nate and I. I had a face filled with freckles but I liked my weight and I loved dolling up my face and hair for my man. He was handsome as hell and would show me - not tell me - just how much he loved me. Now I had shaved the sides of my head and pulled the remnants of my past life - a long tuft of black hair - back in a ponytail. "For a bit of femininity," I'd told the barber in Diamond City. To balance out the hardened garbage I wore as armor and the big, ugly scar I'd been gifted by a Super Mutant. Slashed both above and below my left eye.

And then I met Nick. On the way back to his agency after I had rescued him, he mentioned the scar. "Gives you a look of mystery. No one knows whether you're going to wink at them...or slash their throat." He always lathered on the charm. It was his way. Particularly with women. I saw the way some of the other gals in The City and in Goodneighbor looked at him. Both attracted....and fearful. They didn't understand. They never would.

He didn't remain quiet during my pillaging for long. "You need to do right for people, boss," He said, almost mournfully. Then, it bothered me, that a synth could distill the metal affectation of his voice and speak to me like a concerned citizen. "You know. 'Do onto others,' and all that jazz? Trust me. Things will be better that way."

And he had been right. I had Sanctuary, now. A family.

Not the one I wanted, though.

I was still working on that.

The door led to a rather boring looking chamber. Dust particles filtered in through the broken windows, emphasized by the slivers of sunlight piercing through the fragmented glass. A row of five beds on one wall; another row with the same amount on the other. "Where's the ammo? Where's the goods?" I muttered to myself, growing more irritated by the second. 

"Hmmm," I heard Valentine mutter behind me. "Maybe they locked off the room by accident. I haven't met a raider yet I've been willing to entrust my circuitry to."

With a snort, I started to walk around, checking the ends of beds for anything sweet. I used the barrel of my rifle to peel back the sheets on the many beds - mainly for fun. One could find some interesting things under old, Pre-War bed sheets. I knew I didn't want anyone scavenging through mine.

I reflexively jumped in my boots as I pulled back yet another sheet and found - a stuffed teddy bear and a rattle. The teddy bear wasn't like the others I had come across on my travels. This one wasn't eerily staring up at me with one button eyeball and slashed mouth vomiting cotton. It was relatively clean. It's fur was a soft beige color and instead of buttons it had nice, big black marbles for eyes. It's mouth was a tiny little smile sewn of pink thread. 

It looked just like the one my Nana had given Shaun when he came back home for the first night. I was going through a terrible postpartum depression. I sat in the passenger seat of the car on the way home from the hospital, wondering, "How were we going to do this? I still felt like a kid, myself. How was I supposed to make sure this little screaming shit live?" I loved him. But I also hated him. Nate and I could never be alone now. We'd always have him to look after. To care for. 

I was so sure he was going to cry all night and I was so fucking exhausted, and then Nate experimentally gave him that teddy bear and...he was out like a light.

He slept like an angel. Night after night. We were so fucking lucky.

"Boss? You don't look too good."

Nick was standing in front of me. I was seated on the edge of the bed frame, the teddy bear clutched tight to my chest. I was surprised to hear my voice rattle as I whispered, up to him, "This is just like the one Shaun had."

The look he gave me after that could have frozen my heart. I swallowed something hard that had formulated in my throat. I'd forced myself not to cry for a week straight. It was my running number so far. Seven days without a tear. I suddenly had an itch on the corner of my cheek - and before I could catch it, a cold, metal finger was scraping it away.

"There's nothing good here, anyway," Nick muttered. He pulled his more mechanized hand away from my face - and offered me the hand that still had greying flesh on it. It occurred to me, in that moment, that I had never touched him before. I gave him a weak smile and tried. The skin was smooth and plump. It felt so ridiculously real that it almost terrified me. But not like he had terrified me at first sight. More of the terrifying realization that this was a human standing in front of me and his input meant more to me than anything in the world.

"Let's head back. Maybe Preston can put some soup on for you." I thought I imagined him squeezing my hand as he took it, pulling me from my seat. "And I'll just sit around and pretend to eat, like I normally do."

Bastard. He was trying to make me laugh. "You're a fucking weirdo," I replied. Thanks Nick, for snapping my spine back in place. “Since when did you become such a softie?”

He went to let go of my hand and I foolishly clung to his a moment longer. He didn't question it. I just coughed a little and stepped ahead of him, cocking my rifle for good measure.

"And your mouth is dirtier than an irradiated toilet," He replied, falling in behind me. And then, after we had made our way out of the orphanage and down the road a ways: “Us detectives can’t be hard boiled eggs all the time, boss. And, if I recall correctly, even hard-boiled eggs have soft insides.” Goddamnit, Valentine.


End file.
